Chapter 19: Rue's Last Morning — The Birdsong That Means I Am Here

The false dawn arrives all at once, as it always does — a switch thrown somewhere in Seraphine Voss's control room, light flooding the amphitheater's stone bowl in a single committed pour, no gradation, no mercy of slow brightening. Hamlet has been awake for what he estimates is twenty-two hours. He no longer trusts the estimate.

Rue is sitting up when he turns from his watch position.

Not just awake — sitting up, cross-legged, both hands in her lap, watching the light arrive with the expression of someone who has decided to be interested in it rather than afraid of it. Her breathing is even. Her color is better than it has been in three days. The fever that made her eyes glassy and her speech slightly imprecise has retreated to something the body can negotiate with, and in the space it has vacated she has returned — fully, specifically, herself.